Come on. Even animals are motivated by profit: getting more out of something than you put into it. Profit doesn’t have to mean “shareholder dividends.”
It’s so naive to claim that it’s only society’s setup and status pressures that make us care about getting better things for less effort. As if that hasn’t been the aim of every individual AND every society since the dawn of time.
The easiest way used to be to just plunder people. Take their shit. Now it’s your shit. Easier and faster than making the shit. Woohoo.
Then trade entered the chat, and it was the first time that people started to think there might actually be a better way: that both parties could walk away from an exchange better off, and that it might be in each of their interests to keep the other alive.
At a certain point, profit can turn to status, like with the super wealthy. Elon Musk seems to be pushing for $1T, not because the extra money matters, but because he wants the status of being the first to get there.
But if you look at the quiet majority, many people will take more stressful roles because of the higher earning potential. So they’re increasing their output specifically to get a better standard of living. Those types tend to be contractors, small business owners, and early stage startup employees.
If you look at the alternative, such as China or the USSR, those who rise to the top aren’t those with the highest productivity, but those most able to play the political game. If you look at a small engineering company, it’s generally those with the most technical capability who rise through the ranks, but once you get to larger companies, higher roles generally get taken over by business types, i.e. those best able to play the business side of the political game. It’s the same process, just with different mechanisms for gaining power.
Any proper solution here needs to fix the problem of the wrong people getting to positions of power. The economic system isn’t particularly relevant, other than setting the rules of the game. The best solution, IMO, is to make the rules of the game such that you get punished hard if you don’t know what you’re doing (i.e. you’re a business type running an engineering firm firing top talent to cut quarterly costs), and you get rewarded if you do. If we actually put execs in jail for problems their businesses create, I think we’d quickly see companies like Boeing change their leadership to one that will prevent problems, such as someone w/ an engineering or safety background.
That’s why I think government and the economy should be as separate as possible, and in fact in an adversarial relationship. Bureaucrats should be rewarded for catching crime in the private sector, and private companies should have real incentives to keep everything above board. That can’t happen when politicians are literally funded by the companies they’re supposed to be regulating.
Well considering for the majority of humanity’s existence we existed in largely egalitarian societies I think it’s up to you to prove this is working.
I’m not going to downplay modern medicine and our technological advancements. Capitalism had a role to play in that is just a shame kids in the 3rd world had to starve or die in mines for it to happen. I think we could’ve come up with a better system than that.
Only in a society that commodifies your existence and success based on the wealth you generate/hold
Unless we’re changing the definition of profit to status
Come on. Even animals are motivated by profit: getting more out of something than you put into it. Profit doesn’t have to mean “shareholder dividends.”
It’s so naive to claim that it’s only society’s setup and status pressures that make us care about getting better things for less effort. As if that hasn’t been the aim of every individual AND every society since the dawn of time.
The easiest way used to be to just plunder people. Take their shit. Now it’s your shit. Easier and faster than making the shit. Woohoo.
Then trade entered the chat, and it was the first time that people started to think there might actually be a better way: that both parties could walk away from an exchange better off, and that it might be in each of their interests to keep the other alive.
Your understanding of human history is lacking depth and inaccurate
At a certain point, profit can turn to status, like with the super wealthy. Elon Musk seems to be pushing for $1T, not because the extra money matters, but because he wants the status of being the first to get there.
But if you look at the quiet majority, many people will take more stressful roles because of the higher earning potential. So they’re increasing their output specifically to get a better standard of living. Those types tend to be contractors, small business owners, and early stage startup employees.
If you look at the alternative, such as China or the USSR, those who rise to the top aren’t those with the highest productivity, but those most able to play the political game. If you look at a small engineering company, it’s generally those with the most technical capability who rise through the ranks, but once you get to larger companies, higher roles generally get taken over by business types, i.e. those best able to play the business side of the political game. It’s the same process, just with different mechanisms for gaining power.
Any proper solution here needs to fix the problem of the wrong people getting to positions of power. The economic system isn’t particularly relevant, other than setting the rules of the game. The best solution, IMO, is to make the rules of the game such that you get punished hard if you don’t know what you’re doing (i.e. you’re a business type running an engineering firm firing top talent to cut quarterly costs), and you get rewarded if you do. If we actually put execs in jail for problems their businesses create, I think we’d quickly see companies like Boeing change their leadership to one that will prevent problems, such as someone w/ an engineering or safety background.
That’s why I think government and the economy should be as separate as possible, and in fact in an adversarial relationship. Bureaucrats should be rewarded for catching crime in the private sector, and private companies should have real incentives to keep everything above board. That can’t happen when politicians are literally funded by the companies they’re supposed to be regulating.
Could you provide a realistic alternative that we could transition into?
Well considering for the majority of humanity’s existence we existed in largely egalitarian societies I think it’s up to you to prove this is working.
I’m not going to downplay modern medicine and our technological advancements. Capitalism had a role to play in that is just a shame kids in the 3rd world had to starve or die in mines for it to happen. I think we could’ve come up with a better system than that.